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Denny Hamlin tried everything he could to stay in the contention for the win at Richmond Raceway on Sunday, July 30. Eventual winner Chris Buescher’s challenge during the closing laps, though, left Hamlin in second place.
Buescher was able to drive away from Hamlin in the final restart with three laps to win by 0.549 seconds. It was Hamlin’s second P2 finish of the season and fourth top-five in eight races.
On the final restart with three laps to go, #11 JGR Toyota driver stayed close, but a lap later, went deep, drifting up the track in Turn 2 and lost all his momentum.
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During the post-race interview, Denny Hamlin reflected on what went wrong in the closing laps:
“I drove in way too deep. I was trying to get to the outside there. Really had a great run off of turn two on the restart and off of four again. But, yeah, I was just so close to him there that I wanted to try to squirt a little extra gas to try to get to the outside. Just too much brake”.
Hamlin admitted that the last caution caused by Noah Gragson and Daniel Suarez gave him the chance to line up alongside Buescher on the final restart, but he knew that it would be tough to beat the latter:
“I just didn’t do a good job on the restart. I didn’t do a good job into Turn 1 on the second-to-last lap. Our team gave us a shot. The race should have been his anyway. The caution at the end – it was a second chance at life for us there at the end.”
Denny Hamlin praises Chris Buescher on winning Richmond race
Chris Buescher and his teammate Brad Keselowski, a co-owner of RFK Racing, had the dominant cars in the race as they combined to lead a race-best 190 of the 400 laps.
Despite losing the race to RFK Racing, Denny Hamlin congratulated them for winning their first race of the season. Hamlin said that Buescher and his team worked hard to claim the victory.
Praising Buescher and RFK Racing after the race, Hamlin said:
“I’m happy for Chris, RFK, those guys. I know they worked really hard to get to this point. I can appreciate the struggle that it is to get to this point. Congratulations to them.”
Catch Denny Hamlin in action next weekend at Michigan International Speedway.
